Loud is How I Love You (15 page)

So when Eli asks if I want to see his room, I say yes. Of course I do. I know it’s not my finest moment, but I really want Travis to see me follow this hulking, adorable soccer dude up the stairs and I want him to wonder if I’m about to get head. Then I wonder if I’m about to get head and hope the answer is yes so I can cleanse my sexual palate after the five-star gourmet meal of Travis. That’s clearly over now, so I’d better reacclimate my taste buds to Pizza Hut–level sex. This is reality we’re talking about here.

Eli chases three stoners on a hookah out of his room and then lights a bowl and passes it to me. I say no thanks, because weed makes me sleepy and panicky, but I tell him by all means, go ahead, so he takes a couple of hits.

“Aren’t you worried about drug testing?” I ask.

“I get donor piss,” he says with a self-conscious laugh. “Let me know if you ever need any.”

Gross!

“I don’t play sports,” I say.

“Too bad, because you look like you’d make a good captain for the varsity fucking team,” he says, looking me up and down, and I know it’s because he’s pretty high and maybe that sort of thing works on girls who are fans of soccer, but I don’t know the difference between a wing and a quarterback and all I can think is at least it’s not football. At least he’s cute. And he’s really quite nice. And I think he likes me. So when he asks if he can kiss me, I say, “Yeah, don’t mind if you do.” Then he does and it’s all wet and sloppy and he tastes like Budweiser and weed, which makes me try not to breathe because it’s fucking gross and it’s no wonder I’m perpetually single, yes, I know.

But after the initial shock of weed-beer flavor and those floppy, soft lips and all that saliva, that kiss of his feels not terrible (beer helps) so I try to not think about how it tastes. I get over it quick when he starts to ask me if he can kiss my flower—in Spanish!—which makes me feel all worldly and reminds me of that class trip to Barcelona my junior year of high school, even though he says he’s Dominican. Great, I think. Head is on. I really, truly hope that Travis is outside right now with his ear to a pint glass on the door trying to listen in on this hot Rutgers-soccer-player action I’m about to get.

Then it turns out he’s not asking if he can kiss my flower, he’s asking me to suck his dick. So much for dropping Spanish after my freshman year. “En la boca?” he keeps saying and I don’t know why because the guy speaks perfect English, he grew up in Perth Amboy for Chrissakes. But I’m going to do it, I decide. En la boca. He keeps kissing me, all wet and sloppy, but I tell myself I like it. I tell myself any minute this will start to feel good. I pull him over to his bed and his face lights up with a smile and he has these beautiful, straight teeth. I pause to appreciate again that Eli is actually really hot and a little Scope would solve a lot of my problems right here, but I’m not sure how to suggest it without humiliating him so I don’t. He sits on the bed next to me and takes my hands in his and kisses me again. Then I realize my problem here is not
a lack of Scope.

It’s a lack of Travis.

So instead of focusing on Eli and putting it en la boca, I start thinking about Travis. I’m wondering if he’s left the party with Millie yet, and realizing how I’m going to feel when that happens. Like complete shit, that’s how.

“Hey, sexy,” Eli whispers as he pulls his face away. “What’s wrong? Do you feel okay?”

I feel like a prick, is how I feel. Not sure how I decide this is a good idea, probably booze, but I decide to tell Eli the truth. I am drunk-weeping now, telling him that I’m dealing with a complicated situation with a guy and he’s here and I just can’t stop thinking about him and I don’t know what to do about it. Eli’s face drops and gets angry and I’m worried I may find myself in another kind of situation. A bad one. He looks away for a minute, muttering. Then he gets up off the bed, grabs the bowl off his dresser, lights it, and inhales. He holds it, then blows a cloud of pot smoke into the air as he points at me with the bowl.

“He’s a fuckin’ fool if he lets you get away,” he says.

“It’s not quite like that,” I say. “The problem is that he’s in my band.”

“So?” he asks, like I just spoke German. Which he probably speaks, but I don’t.

“So, he’s in my band,” I say again. “It’d be like having sex with your center defenseman.”

He looks at me like I’m insane.

“So?” he says again, shrugging his shoulders. “You’re into him?”

“I can’t be,” I keep trying to explain. “That’s the problem.”

“He’s not into you?”

“I don’t think you understand,” I say, because he obviously doesn’t.

“Let’s go dance some more or drink until you forget him, then,” he says, and this sounds like a good plan to me, so we go back out of Eli’s room into the hall and holy shit, there’s Travis, in the hallway talking to Sonia and looking super aggravated.

“There you are,” Sonia says. “We were looking all over for you.”

“Sorry,” I say. “I was with Eli making the sexy times.”

“You were not,” Travis says, glaring at Eli. Then he looks at me and wow, does he look unhappy, obviously not catching on to the fact that I’m joking. “Were you?”

“Sure she was,” Eli says, stepping right up to him. “Why? You got a problem with that?”

I guess he does, because before I can intervene and explain that I’m just being an ass and nothing really happened, Travis has Taekwondo’d Eli’s ass, flipped him onto his back right there in the hallway. Now, Eli is a full head taller than Travis and we’re in the soccer house with all the other Rutgers soccer players and I’ve never seen Travis do something this dumb in two years. Never. I mean, he’s not even a little bit drunk. There’s no excuse. Thank fucking God, Eli is so high he just sort of lays there on his back and laughs and calls Travis a motherfucker, but the commotion brings four other guys out of the other two bedrooms, pot smoke billowing out into the hallway in a stale, weedy stench.

“Holy shit, Travis!” I yell. “I didn’t really make the sexy times with Eli, are you crazy?”

“You were thinking about it, though,” Eli says. “We were working on it.”

“Working on it?” Travis looks back at me. “What the hell went on in there?”

“Nothing!” I insist, because come on now, those sloppy kisses don’t count, and sure, maybe I thought about putting it en la boca, but that was never going to happen. That’s why, even with me drunk and Eli stoned, it didn’t happen. “Eli, come on. Be honest.”

“Nothing happened,” Eli says. He’s still on the floor, mind you. I guess pot really does sap your motivation. “She was too busy thinking about your skinny rocker ass.”

“She was?” Travis asks Eli. “Why? What did she say about me in there?”

“She said you have a tiny dick,” he says. “That’s why you have to Taekwondo that shit to prove yourself.”

“I definitely wouldn’t say that,” I say. “He has a huge dick.”

“I knew it,” Sonia mutters. I look at her, aghast.

“Emmy, give me your number, girl,” Eli says. “So when I’m done kicking your boyfriend’s ass I can call you from the emergency room to come pick him up.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” I say. “I thought I explained that.”

Travis gives me the side eyes as he helps Eli off the floor, but then he backs up into three other soccer players, who grab hold of him as Eli gives him an enormous, brilliant, shit-eating grin. Eli pulls back to throw a punch but Sonia shrieks and grabs his arm and I put myself in front of Travis like a human shield.

“Look out, sexy,” Eli says. “I owe him one.”

“Come on, he’s really sorry,” I say to Eli.

“No I’m not,” Travis says behind me, indignant, too, and he’s doing me and himself no favors. Then he elbows the one guy holding him, who apparently is too high to keep much of a grip, right in the gut and that guy doubles over. Travis wrenches himself free, pulling me by the arm into Eli’s room with Sonia scrambling in right behind us. We lock the door before the soccer team gets in. Gotta love stoners, it’s like they’re in slow motion.

“Dude, he’s not gonna nail those two girls in your room, is he?” we hear one of the stoned soccer players ask from the other side of the door.

“You know what they say, guitarists get all the pussy,” someone else says.

“Actually, that’s singers,” Travis says from our side of the door. “Emmy’s getting all the pussy in here. I’m just watching.”

“I just bought those sheets, you assholes!” Eli yells.

Sonia cannot resist, she starts moaning like she’s in heat, calling my name as loud as she can, as Travis pulls the window open. The soccer players are saying, “Oh yeah, oh fuck yeah, that dude is a hero.” It’s so funny, I can’t help but join in and now Sonia and I are both yelling, “Oh! Travis! Travis! Oh my God, yes! That’s it! Fuck me harder, Travis!”

“No fucking way, man!” Eli yells. “I’m breaking this fucking door down!”

“You two are just trying to get me killed, now,” Travis accuses us.

Now it sounds like four guys are about to rip the door off the hinges so we decide to climb out onto the fire escape and down into the backyard. As we run for our lives (not really) down the street, we can still hear Eli calling, “Skinny punk rock motherfucker!” after us from his bedroom window, and the three of us just laugh our asses off, all the way back to Steady Beth.

Travis takes Sonia and me to the System to sober us up on milkshakes and greasy, delectable french fries with a pint of ketchup dumped right in the waxed-paper bag from white plastic squeeze bottles and I’m in a great mood now. I mean, great. First, Travis explains after we leave the party that he wasn’t there with Millie at all, am I stupid? Well, I think we all know the answer to that now. And what the hell was I thinking letting some stoned athlete drag me off to his bedroom? Didn’t I read any of the campus safety literature when I was a freshman? (Seriously though, do people actually read those pamphlets?)

I’m sitting in the van in my seat behind him, watching his face in the mirror, and I don’t think he’s even mad at me now. Sonia is sitting in Cole’s seat and we’re cranking the new Radiohead (Baby’s got the bends!) on the stereo as we cruise the speed limit in sleepy Highland Park on our way to our house. Travis parks and Sonia hops out and I’m climbing out the side door when Travis stops me.

“Emmylou, wait a minute,” he says.

I look over my shoulder at him.

“Aren’t you coming in?” I ask.

He smiles and cuts the engine and follows me inside. Jeff is hanging out on the couch with Adam and they’re watching
Raising Arizona
on VHS. They slide over and Adam pats the couch.

“Watch with us,” he says. “We just got started.”

Sonia flops down on the couch with the remainder of her fries, and I’m about to say no when I notice Travis is standing so close behind me I can feel him. I can feel the edge of his jacket brushing the back of my arm. I can feel his fingers brush mine and why are we still standing here in the living room again?

“I just watched it last week,” I say. “But thanks.”

“Sure thing, lovers,” Jeff says and then winks, and my heart is pounding as I take Travis by the hand and lead him upstairs to my bedroom.

I flip the light on and I’m barely able to get the door locked before Travis has my back up against it. He’s leaning on his elbow against the door, trapping me between it and all that Travis, glowering at me like I’m in serious trouble and I know I am because whatever he wants from me right now, he’s going to have it. I don’t even care. I’m fucking ravenous for Travis,
craving him like a stoner craves Fat Cats at two a.m. Saturday night.

“I’m sorry I’m such an idiot,” I say.

“Yeah? How sorry?” he says.

I unbutton my jacket and drop it to the floor and when that doesn’t impress him, I pull my dress off over my head and stand there in my bra and panties and cowgirl boots. And now he’s impressed. He takes a step back and looks at me and the low hissing sound he makes suggests he approves of what he’s seeing. He backs me against the door again, fingering my bra strap as he speaks, his voice all sexy and gravelly.

“Tell me what happened back there at the party,” he says. “Did you let that asshole touch you?”

“No,” I can barely say because he’s kissing behind my ear and all I want is to feel him pressed against me, but aside from his lips to my neck, his hand pinning me to the door, he stays just out of my reach. Frustrated, I look him in the eye. “I didn’t let him touch me.”

“Why not?” he asks like a dare.

“Because he’s not you, all right?”

“That’s right,” he says. “But this
is
me, and now I’m going to touch you. Everywhere. All night.”

Oh, holy shit yes. Yes.
Please,
I hear whispered, and I’m not sure if I breathed it or said it or if it was only in my head. My skin feels hot when his fingers brush over my neck, under my chin as he kisses me, soft and slow, the top lip and then the bottom and then his tongue is there, between my lips and teasing into my mouth. He unhooks my bra, pulls it off my shoulders and drops it to the floor and for a minute he does nothing else but look at me. His eyes on my naked breasts, on the blush in my face, make me cower. I put my arms around his neck but he takes my wrists and pins them over my head with one hand while he traces his fingertip so slow and light down my nose. I laugh, but then he drags his index finger across my lips until they part, and he slides it in, over my tongue and gets it all wet and that’s not the only thing around here that’s wet now. Not by a long shot. He draws the tip of his finger lazily down my neck, down my chest, over to my nipple and paints small circles until I feel that torture all the way inside of me. All the way down. There’s a gaping emptiness in me that I am desperate for him to fill. With his cock, of course.

“Travis,” I moan into his neck.

My eyes fall closed as his fingers trace a path down to my belly button, then lower, along the lace of my underwear until I’m sucking in my breath and trying to move against him and now I know I am saying it, “Please, Travis. Please.”

“Please what?” he asks. I open my eyes and he’s watching my face and I can only imagine what he sees there when he smiles like that, his eyes all narrow slits, the curve of his lip so satisfied.

“Please touch me,” I whisper.

“Where?”

“You know where.”

“Here?” He touches my nose with his lips.

“No. Not there.”

“Here?” He kisses my chin. “Or here?” he teases as he moves this torment to my neck.

I thrust my hips into him and he lets go of my wrists as he slips his hand into my panties, already damp. My knees go weak as his fingers glide along me, teasing, but then I decide to go with that weak-kneed feeling and drop down onto my knees. I kiss him along the waistline of his jeans, and his skin is so warm and he smells so fucking good and now he’s leaning his head on the door saying my name like it’s a prayer. A prayer for head, I guess.

I kiss into the fine blond hair on his stomach. And Christ, he smells amazing right here, too, like salted lime and winters way up north, but now I’m focused on what’s just south of my lips. I kiss his hip and he gets goose bumps, which is the most adorable and sexy thing in the world on a guy. I grip his hips and unbutton his jeans with my teeth. It’s one of the few porn star moves I actually know, and I’m glad I took the time to learn it because now Travis is saying, “Oh fuck, oh fuck,” and he’s running his hand through my hair, those fingers strong and sure on my skull. I pull his cock out of his pants and it’s this thick, hard monster in my face. He strokes my cheek softly with his thumb and his hand is so sweet and encouraging in my hair, I feel like I want to come right there. I also feel like oh God, I wish I wasn’t so out of practice at blow jobs. How am I going to get this thing down? I’m holding him and running my tongue and my lips along the length of him and listening to him breathe so hard but I have no idea how I’m even going to get my mouth around him.

But I’m a rock-and-roll champ, remember, so I do.

I don’t get him real far down, but I get him in, and I’m stroking him with my hand and trying to concentrate on just feeling him and not choking while he’s telling me how incredible it feels, how amazing I am, and I know it sounds weird but when he says it, I feel it. I feel like I really am amazing, just for making him feel that good. Then just as I’m really getting him going, he pulls out of my mouth, lifts me off the floor, and all but throws me onto the bed. He rips my panties off, digging his fingers into my hips as he holds them down. His face is between my legs and he’s eating me alive, tongue up inside of me, all over me. I’m moaning so loud that I cover my face with my pillow but when I do he stops, pulls the pillow
away, and whips it across the room.

“They’ll hear me all the way across the river to New Brunswick,” I argue. “I’m too loud, I can’t help it.”

“Good,” he says. “Loud is how I love you.”

He gives me this crooked grin that tells me he has no idea how much he’s just wrecked me. How my heart has just grown ten sizes too big and exploded right inside of me. I feel my mouth drop open and I can tell I’m still breathing but I have no idea how. He must not know what he’s done because he doesn’t call an ambulance, he just takes both my hands in his, laces his fingers with mine and pulls my hands down to my sides, next to my hips. He holds them down to the bed and puts his face back between my legs and he licks and licks and licks me, slow and soft and steady, and I can’t help it, something inside of me lets go and now I’m super, extra loud. Like, really loud. I just let go, and this is just like when I sing—I’m gone and there’s nothing left of me but feeling and the sound of my voice. But I’m not singing now, I’m saying things like, “Oh Jesus, oh my fucking God, oh Travis, I’m coming, I’m coming,” and then I am, all over his tongue. When it’s over he’s right next to me, kissing me on the forehead, holding my hand. We can hear Holly Hunter downstairs on the TV crying, “I love him so mu-u-u-u-uch . . .”

And we both laugh because, obviously, somebody has turned the TV all the way up. Oh well.

I think this is the pause before he grabs his wallet and takes a condom out, but he doesn’t do that. He lays there next to me, looking at me all quiet and thoughtful. He’s still holding on to my hand. I turn to him, open my mouth to speak, and if I could turn back time, yeah, if I could find a way, I’d take back those words that were so fucking stupid, I still cringe when I remember them to this day.

“Maybe we can just be bandmates with benefits,” I say in this light, joking manner.

His face turns dark like it’s in the shadow of my own stupid.

“Bandmates with benefits?” he says. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah,” I say. “No? What’s the right answer?”

“The right answer is that you want more from me than just benefits.”

“I have a lot more from you already,” I say. “That’s the point. I have the best guitarist in New Brunswick. I have you in a band that I love like my own family. What more can I ask than that?”

“Plenty,” he says. “If you actually wanted more.”

I don’t know what to say, because right before this moment I felt like I finally had it all. I thought I’d figured it all out.
As my guitarist, I’ve managed to hold on to Travis for two years. Two whole years. I’ve never had a boyfriend that long. Remember Josh? That was horrible, and then he dumped me. He dumped
me
! I didn’t even like him by the time he dumped me, but I was still really fucked up over that. I just can’t imagine how I’m going to deal if Travis becomes my boyfriend and then he dumps me, too. Not only would I lose him, I wouldn’t even have a band anymore. And the likelihood of me doing something stupid and losing Travis, well, I think it’s pretty obvious just how realistic that scenario is.

“I’ve got everything I want now with the way things are,” I say. “Don’t you?”

“No,” he says. “I don’t.”

I can’t lay here naked with him looking all pissed off like this. I get up and pull a T-shirt and pajama bottoms on as he waits for me to say something else. Something better. I know what he wants to hear—he wants me to say,
Oh, Travis, you’re the love of my life, yes, of course I want to be your girlfriend. If the band doesn’t work out, so be it. You’re all that matters.
And you know something? He does matter. He matters to me more than anyone or anything, but the problem here is, if things don’t work out with him, where will I be then? How am I going to deal with that? I’ll lose my best friend
and
my band. And no. Just no.

I wish I was the kind of person who gets quiet and thoughtful when I get nervous, but I’m not. At all. I’m a rambler, because of course I am. So now as I’m having a panic attack, I’m saying things right as they pop into my head because this is Travis here, and I have never had to be careful with him. I haven’t learned how to be careful with him. In fact, I haven’t even learned yet that there are times when I
should
be careful with him. With him I have no filters, there are no games. There never have been games between us. Not until now. Not until I fucked him and fucked everything between us at the same time.

All my anxiety starts to run away like a freight car, right off the fucking rails, and it all spills out of my mouth of like so:
Look at Circle Time, Travis. Do you want Soft to end up like that? We can’t shake things up like this just before we’ve got this big Ag Field Day show. Joey will freak out. What if he leaves? If we can’t agree on what our status is here, then we’ve just got to keep it in our pants, all right? Before we fuck our friendship all the way up. No more. We’ve worked for two years, Travis. Two years to get Soft this far, and we’re so close to a CMJ showcase. If we can’t agree on how to handle this, then we just have to stay friends and that’s it. It’s for the band. Nothing is more important than that right now.

He doesn’t interrupt me, not even once. He stares, his eyes dark and vacant, out the window.

The sight of Travis’s face normally always makes me feel so at home. When he’s lost in the sound he’s making with his guitar. When he’s laughing. When he sees me and his eyes go soft and happy. When he’s talking about European history. This face he’s wearing when he leaves? It’s awful. It’s blank, cold, and far away in a way that’s all new to me.

And the worst part is, I know it’s all my fault. All I want is to keep him around but I can’t figure out how to stop pushing
him away.

***

Tuesday night, Stars on the Floor rehearses in the band cave. It’s the first I’ve seen or spoken to Travis since my very unfortunate tirade, because for once I really do give him space, because I’m terrified that he’s hanging in there with Soft by the thinnest of threads, and anything that comes out of my mouth now will likely snap it. Unfortunately, the angsty funk that is pervading the air between me and Travis has infiltrated the band cave, and it’s completely fucking with how he and I play. And now I’m pissed, too. Right now we are tearing through “Daylight in Exeter” and we are fucking this up so bad I can feel my dinner making its way up into the so-mad-I-can-puke zone. At the end, we barely all manage to finish the song in one piece it’s so bad. Joey asks us what the hell we’re thinking, how did we both miss that change, but miss it in completely different ways?

Travis turns his back to me and faces his amp, adjusting the volume up. I look down at my pedals and fiddle with tuning my guitar.